October 9^th is

World Post Day

Curious Events Day

Fire Prevention Day *

Leif Erikson Day *

Nautilus Night *

Pizza and Beer Day  *

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MORE! Maria Filotti, Abdullah Ibrahim and Nona Hendryx, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Argentina – Córdoba: Anima Festival
Internacional de Animación

Ecuador – Guayaquil Independence Day

France – Paris:
Montmartre Grape Harvest

Japan – Takayama: Autumn Festival

Netherlands – Rotterdam:
AFFR Architecture Film Festival

Saint Barthélemy – Abolition Day *

South Africa – Bloemfontien:
Macufe Comedy Festival

South Korea – Hangul Day *
(Korean alphabet day)

Romania –
Holocaust Commemoration Day

Spain – Valenciana:
Community Day (regional)

Uganda – Independence Day

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On This Day in HISTORY

768 – Charles I (Charlemagne) and his younger brother Carloman I each inherit half the kingdom of the Franks. Carloman dies in 771, possibly of natural causes,  and his brother annexes his portion of the kingdom, in spite of Carloman’s two sons’ claims which their mother attempts to uphold, with herself as regent until the eldest comes of age. The fate of the boys and their mother is unknown

1238 – James I of Aragon conquers Valencia and founds the Kingdom of Valencia

1410 – Clockmaker Mikulášof Kadaň and astronomer Jan Šindel install the Prague Orloj, the oldest astronomical clock still in working order in the world

1446 – The hangeul * (“great script”) alphabet is introduced in Korea. Before this, learned Koreans usually wrote using Classical Chinese with one of the native phonetic writing systems. The new alphabet was promulgated to greatly simplify writing, making it much easier for people with little education to learn how to read and write

1604 – Kepler’s Supernova was seen in the Milky Way, in the constellation Ophiuchus

1635 – Roger Williams, tried and convicted of sedition and heresy, is banished from Massachusetts, after speaking against civil magistrates ordering punishments for religious offences, and in favor of a person’s right to follow their own religious convictions. He also questions the King’s right to grant charters to lands already inhabited by indigenous peoples. He shelters for the winter with the Wampanoags’ chief Massasoit, and begins a new settlement called Providence in the spring of 1636

1701 – The Collegiate School of Connecticut is chartered in Old Saybrook CT, later moved to New Haven and re-named Yale University

1776 – Spanish missionaries settle in what will be San Francisco CA

1804 – Hobart, the capital of Tasmania, is founded

Hobart Town by Alan Carswell, 1821

1813 – Giuseppe Verdi born, famous Italian opera composer; his many works include Rigoletto; Il trovatore; La traviata; and Aida

1818 – In a letter to a friend, poet John Keats writes, “I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest.”

1823 – Mary Shadd Cary born, American-Canadian abolitionist, journalist and the first black woman newspaper editor in North America, of the Provincial Freeman, in Windsor, Canada, which helped freed slaves know their rights; she graduated as a lawyer from Howard University School of Law at the age of 60 in 1883, becoming the second black woman in the United States to earn a law degree

1824 – Slavery is abolished in Costa Rica

1834 – Ireland’s first public railway, the Dublin and Kingstown line, opens

1835 – Camille Saint-Saëns born, notable French composer and conductor; best known for The Carnival of the Animals, and Danse macabre

1847 – Slavery is abolished in Saint Bathélemy,* and all slaves on the island are freed

1855 – Isaac Singer patents the sewing machine motor, and Joshua C. Stoddard patents his calliope

1858 – Mail service via stagecoach between San Francisco CA and St. Louis MO begins

1859 – Alfred Dreyfus born, French artillery officer who was accused, and summarily found guilty in a secret court martial, of treason for passing on information to a German spy, and sentenced to life imprisonment at the infamous prison on Devil’s Island. When evidence was discovered by a new chief of military intelligence that another officer was likely the traitor, the chief was transferred to the Tunisian desert. The officer in question was tried, again secretly, and found not guilty, but then fled to England. The story leaked to the press, setting off a heated debate about French anti-Semitism, and demands from Dreyfus supporters, including author Émile Zola, for a new trial. Dreyfus was founded guilty a second time, in spite of evidence in favor of his innocence, but public pressure caused the French president to offer him a pardon in 1899. Dreyfus, faced with accepting the pardon, or life imprisonment on Devil’s Island, took the pardon. Dreyfus said upon his release, “The government of the Republic has given me back my freedom. It is nothing for me without my honor.” He spent years under house arrest at the home of one of his sisters. In 1906, he was officially exonerated by a military commission, and was readmitted to the army with a promotion to the rank of major. A week later, he was made a knight of the Ordre national de la Légion d’honneur, the first level of distinction of France’s highest order of merit

1860 – Leonard Wood born, Army officer and doctor, Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army (1910-1914); one of the ‘Rough Riders’ in Cuba during the Spanish-American War, Military Governor of Cuba (1899-1902)

1872 – Aaron Montgomery sends out the first mail order catalogue – later, the firm becomes Montgomery Ward

1874 –  Union postale universelle, the Universal Postal Union (UPU), is created by the Treaty of Bern to: establish uniform postal rates for international mail; set guidelines for equal treatment of foreign and domestic mail; eliminate the need for extra postage as international mail passes through other countries in transit to its destination; and set standards for size and design of international postage stamps for maximum efficiency, such as showing the value of stamps in numerals instead of spelled out in letters. The UPU became a specialized agency of the United Nations in 1948 (see 1969 entry)

1883 – Maria Filotti born, Romanian actress and director of the “Teatrul Comunal” (“The Communal Theatre”) in Brăila, Romania, and renamed in 1969, the Maria Fioltti Theatre in her honor. She had a distinguished stage career, where she was regarded as one of the “prestigious actors of the great realistic school,” and also appeared in several silent films. Her autobiography, Am ales teatrul (I Chose the Theatre), was published in 1961, five years after her death

1884 –Helen Deutsch born in Poland, Polish-American Freudian psychoanalyst, one of the first psychoanalysts to specialize in women; author of the 2-volume The Psychology of Women, with emphasis on motherhood; many of her ideas are now considered mistaken

1888 – The Washington Monument opens to the public in Washington DC

1890 – Aimee Semple McPherson born in Canada, Pentecostal evangelist and media celebrity who skillfully used radio to build up her image; there are still unresolved questions about whether or not she engineered her own kidnapping in 1926 when she disappeared for five weeks, causing an all-out media frenzy

1892 – Abigail A. Eliot born, American authority on early childhood education; founding member of the National Association for the Education of Young Children, which established standards, and monitors education quality; founder of the Ruggles Street Nursery school in 1922, which also trained teachers in early childhood education – later became Tufts University’s Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study. The Eliot-Pearson Award, known as an “Abby,” honors outstanding contributions to children’s media

1898 – Tawfīq el-Hakīm born, a pioneer of the Egyptian novel and a dramatic playwright

1899 – Bruce Catton born, American Civil War historian and author; 1954 Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award for A Stillness at Appomattox, final volume of The Army of the Potomac trilogy

1901 – Alice Mae Lee Jemison born, member of the Seneca tribe, Indian nations rights activist, journalist, major critic of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and the New Deal policies of its commissioner John Collier. She fought for the diversity of Indian cultures, protesting against a monolithic, romantic notion of primitives

Seneca headdress and crane comb

1907 – Las Cruces, New Mexico is incorporated

1911 – The Fire Marshall’s Association of North America holds the first Fire Prevention Day * on the anniversary of the last day of the Great Chicago Fire. President Woodrow Wilson proclaims Fire Prevention Week in 1920

1915 – Belva Plain born, best-selling American novelist of popular and historical fiction; known for the Werner Family Saga

1918 – Bebo Valdés born, Cuban pianist, bandleader and composer-arranger

1920 – Yusef Lateef, born William Huddleston, American Jazz instrumentalist and composer; noted for using Asian instruments and creating Jazz-Asian fusion music

1926 – Danièle Delorme born as Gabrielle Danièle Girard, French actress and film producer; she appeared in over 60 films, including the title role of Gigi in the original 1948 French film, and co-founded Renn Productions in the 1970s with her second husband, actor/filmmaker Yves Robert. Delorme served on the Caméra d’Or jury at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival

1930 – Aviator Laura Ingalls (not the author) becomes the first woman to fly across the U.S., completing a nine-stop journey from New York’s Roosevelt Field to Glendale CA; she held several solo records in the 1930s; in 1941, she was charged and convicted of failing to register as a paid German agent

1933 – Peter Mansfield born, British physicist, 2003 Nobel Laureate for work on Magnetic Resonance Imagining (MRI) with Paul Lauterbur

1934 – Jill Ker Conway born in Australia, academic, historian and author; first woman president of Smith College (1975-1985); she engaged in creative circumvention of  Massachusetts welfare laws so single-parent scholarship students wouldn’t have to choose between welfare benefits to support their families or scholarships to continue their education, leading to a change in Massachusetts welfare laws enabling students to keep both their benefits and scholarships

1934 – Abdullah Ibrahim, born as Adolph Brand, South African pianist and composer

1936 – Generators at Boulder Dam (now Hoover Dam) begin producing electricity

1940 – John Lennon born, English singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer; The Beatles

1944 – Rita Donaghy born, Baroness Donanghy; British academic administrator, trade unionist, Labour life peer of the House of Lords; President of the trade union NALGO (National and Local Government Officers’ Association – 1989-1990)

1944 – Nona Hendryx born, American vocalist, songwriter and record producer; member of Labelle and Talking Heads, as well as transitioning into a successful solo career.  She has openly discussed her bisexuality, and is a LGBT rights activist. In 2008, she joined Cindi Lauper on her True Colors Tour, to raise awareness of discrimination against the LGBT community

1946 – The Eugene O’Neill drama The Iceman Cometh opens on Broadway

1950 – Jody Williams born, American academic, author and political activist for human rights and women’s rights; founding coordinator of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) and winner of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts toward banning anti-personnel mines 

1953 – The South African National Party’s legislation, Reservation of Amentities Act No 49 goes into effect, formalising separation of everything from general infrastructure, education and jobs, to separate beaches, parks and toilets for different racial groups, establishing the posting of apartheid signs to show which people were permitted to make use of which facilities throughout the country. Those designated for non-Whites were usually inferior to those for Whites

1961 – Ellen Wheeler born, American actress, television director and producer

1962 – Uganda becomes an independent British Commonwealth realm

1964 – U.S. Congress passes a joint resolution declaring October 9 Leif Erikson Day *

1967 – Guerrilla leader Che Guevara is executed in Bolivia

1969 – World Post Day * is officially recognized at the Universal Postal Union Congress, to celebrate its founding

1970 – The Khmer Republic is proclaimed in Cambodia

1975 – Soviet scientist Andrei Sakharov is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

1980 – Lucy Akello born, Ugandan social worker and Forum for Democratic Change politician; current member of the Ugandan parliament, since 2016. In 2005, she was hired by Justice & Peace Commission (JPC), a local non-government organization within the Catholic Church that promotes peace and reconciliation in war-torn Northern Uganda. She worked there for ten years, beginning as a program officer, then as a program manager and from 2006 until 2014, as the executive director. She focused on human rights, land rights, women’s rights and children’s rights

1980 – Sarah Lovell born, Australian Labor politician; member of the Tasmanian Legislative Council for Rumney since 2017; before running for public office, she was a union representative for United Voice (a large trade union representing workers in a wide range of occupations)

1981 – Capital punishment is abolished in France

1986 – Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera debuts in London

1992 – A 28 pound (13 kilogram) meteorite lands in the driveway of Knapp residence, in Peekskill, New York, destroying family’s 1980 Chevrolet Malibu

2003 – Queen Elizabeth II makes Sting a Commander of the British Empire (CBE)

2006 – North Korea announces that it had conducted its nuclear weapons test

2007 – As part of International Cephalopod Awareness Days, Nautilus Night celebrates the lesser-known extant cephalopods, some of the 800 cephalopods known to science

2009 – President Barack Obama is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

2010 – Chile’s 33 trapped miners cheer and embrace each other as a drill punched into their underground chamber where they had been stuck for an agonizing 66 days

2012 – The Pakistani Taliban make a failed attempt to assassinate 15-year-old Malala Yousafzai for speaking out for the rights of girls to an education, sparking international support for her and her cause

2014 – The Egyptian government confiscates all copies of a daily print of Al-Masry Al-Youm, one of the country’s largest private newspapers, in order to censor one article quoting former spy Refaat Jibril’s claims the government exchanged Israeli spies for prisoners held by Israel instead of shooting them, and that Egyptian intelligence agencies used their resources for domestic spying. This was just days after President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi vowed in a U.S. television interview that there was “no limitation on freedom of expression in Egypt.” Since the July 2013 military takeover of the government, the main opposition news media had been shut down, and several journalists were jailed, including three Al Jazeera network journalists sentenced to a minimum of seven years in prison, charged with broadcasting false reports of civil unrest

2016 – Dozens of cholera cases have been reported in parts of southwestern Haiti that were devastated by Hurricane Matthew. Thousands of homes were flattened by the storm, and roads and bridges were washed out, leaving already remote mountainside farming areas cut off from relief supplies, medical supplies, and clean water. In one hospital, in Port-a-Piment, patients came in with cholera symptoms, spilling out of clinic rooms into the courtyard. “Ninety to 95 percent of these patients have cholera — diarrhea, vomiting,” said Missole Antoine, the medical director at the hospital, which was nearly out of all medicines

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